Page 124 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

THE PHONE PULSEDin Sebastian’s back pocket.

He wiped his hands on his thighs, the Technicolor of paints spreading into hued streaks of black against the dark material.

He withdrew the phone and sighed. He considered ending the call, but it would only ring again, until there was a knock on the front door instead. And if he didn’t answer that, she’d climb through an open window or an unlocked door.

He placed the phone to his ear. ‘Esther.’

‘Have you looked at it yet?’ his agent asked. ‘I know it was delivered this morning.’

His lips lifted. No small talk. No softening of her irritated tone. Always straight to the point.

‘No.’

She huffed, and he imagined her in her glass office in London, the skyscrapers behind her as she sat at her desk, small and formidable, in the largest and tallest art gallery the world had seen.

He’d only been there once, but he remembered the determined line of her mouth, daring those who entered to defy her.

Sabastian had dared to enter—and refuse her. What felt like a lifetime ago, in his fingerless gloves and woolly hat, he’d walked up to her desk and returned the cheque she’d handed him. He’d slid it, smudged from his dirty fingers, across her antique oak desk with embossed green leather, and walked away.

‘Have you looked atanyof them?’ she asked, pulling him back into the present.

He didn’t answer. He glanced at the small pile of newspapers stacked in the corner of his studio. Each was paper-clipped with a note from Esther, demanding that he call her once he’d looked at them.

He hadn’t looked, and he hadn’t called.

His gaze travelled over the walls of his studio. It had seemed the ideal place to work when he’d purchased the castle. The outer wall had crumbled, so he’d restored it, replacing the wall with glass, and now it looked as if nothing stood between him and the Scottish Highlands.

So much light flooded into the dark space. And it taunted him. A light he could never quite catch in the right position to tempt his artist’s eye.

Easels sat in every available space, unfinished. The studio was chaos. Every medium he’d tried. Clay, spray foam, paint. He’d even gone out into the moors, walked knee-deep into the lowlands, collected heather and mud to build a sculpture.

Nothing was working.

Nothinghadworked.

Until he’d gone back to the cheap spray-paint he’d started with, the kind that was so readily available from anywhere. And even then, the work felt old. Something he’d done before. A different picture with the same old media and the same canvas. The same street wall where he’d let himself first be what and who he was.

An artist.

Was he still one when he couldn’t work? Couldn’t come up with anything new, fresh?

He swallowed thickly. ‘I haven’t.’

‘I know it’s you.’

‘And if it is?’ he asked, walking over to the newspaper on top of the pile and picking it up.

‘They’ve set up specialist teams to track them—to track you down,’ she added, ignoring his question, and he snarled. His privacy was his own. They had no right.

‘If any more pop up, without me knowing… They will take them before they hit the newspapers,’ she continued. ‘They will take them before the local councils can tape them off and keep them safe. And even then—’ She sighed heavily.

Anger fizzed under his skin. It was for them. The public. The ordinary. The unseen. His work was not for the eyes of the rich.

‘What have you done to stop this?’ he asked.

‘Nothing!’ she hissed. ‘I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me where they are.’

He unfolded the newspaper. The clip and Esther’s note slid free and tinkled to the bare floorboards.